Archive for women

My most recent book for The WWI Challenge was Enid Bagnold’s A Diary Without Dates, which is out of copyright and available for free download. It’s a famous work (the author also wrote National Velvet) and one I’ve meant to read for some time. I’m glad the challenge gave me a push!

Bagnold worked as a V.A.D. at the beginning of the war, but after this memoir was published, she was dismissed because her writing was seen as too critical of the hospital administration. She then volunteered as an ambulance driver in France, a more dangerous and physically challenging duty; I haven’t yet read her memoir of her experiences as a driver.

Accounts of war work written by women are much rarer than those written by men, and accounts published while the war was still going on are even rarer. (Many were published decades later.) Even aside from its historical value–it shows a woman’s thoughts as well as her activities– A Diary Without Dates is worth reading for its prose quality.

Yes, the impermanency of life in a hospital! An everlasting dislocation of combinations. Like nuns, one must learn to do with no nearer friend than God. Bolts, in the shape of sudden, whimsical orders, are flung by an Almighty whom one does not see.

From a later section:

The hospital–a sort of monotone, a place of whispers and wheels moving on rubber tyres, long corridors, and strangely unsexed women moving in them. Unsexed not in any real sense, but the white clothes, the hidden hair, the stern white collar just below the chin, give them an air of school-girlishness, an air and a look women don’t wear in the world. They seem unexpectant.

This paragraph is so baldly stated, it seems brutal, but it’s also very emotional.

When a man dies they fetch him with a stretcher, just as he came in; only he enters with a blanket over him, and a flag covers him as he goes out. When he came in he was one of a convoy, but every man who can stand rises to his feet as he goes out. Then they play him to his funeral, to a grass mound at the back of the hospital.

And this:

…no philosophy helps the pain of death. It is pity, pity, pity, that I feel, and sometimes a sort of shame that I am here to write at all.

This bit of incident offered an unusual glimpse of a colonial soldier, stranded far from home, in a land where no one has ever met anyone else like him:

Henry came in to help us with our Christmas decorations on Christmas Eve, and as he cleverly made wreaths my Sister whispered to me, “He’s never spitting…in the ward!” But he wasn’t, it was part of his language–little clicks and ticks. He comes from somewhere in Central Africa, and one of the T.B.’s told me, “He’s only got one wife, nurse.” He is very proud of his austerity, for he has somehow discovered that he has hit on a country where it is the nutty thing only to have one wife. No one can speak a word of his language, no one knows exactly where he comes from; but he can say in English, “Good morning, Sister!” and “Christmas Box!” and “One!”

Every person she writes of has a larger story that we will never know. But at the same time, because she wrote of them, we will never forget.

The man I was to inquire for has no nostrils; they were blown away, and he breathes through two pieces of red rubber tubing: it gave a more horrible look to his face than I have ever seen. The Sister came out and told me she thought he was “not up to much.” I think she means he is dying. I wonder if he thinks it better to die…. But he was nearly well before he got pneumonia, had begun to take up the little habits of living. He had been out to tea. Inexplicable, what he thinks of, lying behind the screen.

…Ryan, the man with his nose gone, was lying high on five or six pillows, slung in his position by tapes and webbing passed under his arms and attached to the bedposts. He lay with his profile to me–only he has no profile, as we know a man’s. Like an ape, he has only his bumpy forehead and his protruding lips–the nose, the left eye, gone. He was breathing heavily. They don’t know yet whether he will live.

Great names of thy great captains gone before
Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:
Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free
Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.
Such only may outreach the envious years
Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,
Nurtured in one remembrance and one love
Too high for passion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home,
Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts
Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,
Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts
Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.

Now on to today’s topic. I don’t intend to make “unusual heroines” a weekly thing, but I do want to know…where are the romance heroines who are academics?
Career academic who solves murders, yes: Quieter than Sleep by Joanne Dobson, which I mentioned yesterday. Grad student swept into fantasy realm where she has to learn to use a sword, sure: The Time of the Dark by Barbara Hambly.

But not so much with the heroines in contemporary romances. Bluestockings or so-called bluestockings in historical romance novels, yes, pretty often. I think of them as a different category, since most of them were educated at home or through an indulgent family, not at all the same thing as today’s academic world. (There’s a list of bluestocking heroines at All About Romance here.)

My question is more aimed at contemporaries. Where are the romance heroines fighting for tenure, balancing writing their dissertation with the demands of their billionaire lover, having to skip an anniversary dinner because of a conference? If there are women academics in romance novels, how often do we actually see them do anything, well, academic?

I mentioned on Twitter that I was writing this post, and promptly got some suggestions!

Victoria Dahl’s upcoming novel, Bad Boys Do, features a heroine who’s an instructor at a university, which means no job security–a great touch of realism!

The heroine in Erin McCarthy’s Hard and Fast is working on a Master’s degree in sociology.

The heroine of Judith Ivory’s The Proposition is a linguist, but isn’t shown to be associated with any particular university; she might be considered more in the “bluestocking” category.

I have to work on accepting compliments about my writing.
It’s weird to think of that as a skill that one must acquire, but the more I talk to people about my writing, the more I realize how difficult it is to walk the fine line between sounding like you’re bragging, and unrealistic self-deprecation. The problem is worse, I think, for women; part of our socialization, in most places in the world, includes being modest about our abilities and our hard work. There’s a reason why women in the nineteenth century championed housewifery/domestic science as a real job; there’s a reason why Nora Roberts, in her futuristic Eve Dallas series, often mentions the “professional mother.” Because women’s work is so devalued, I’ve find it’s often a reflex (particularly when I’m uncomfortable in a situation) to immediately downplay any compliment I receive.

Fictional person at bookstore: “I really loved the plot of Your Great American Novel.”

Fictional author: “I’m still learning about plot, but I did have fun experimenting with it in that book.”

Sure, that response acknowledges weakness the author perceives in the novel, and feels honest, but it also takes away, a little, from pleasure in the compliment for both people involved. That response doesn’t give the author a glow of happiness that someone liked her plot; instead the glow is washed away by self-criticism. Nor does that response clearly acknowledge to the giver that the compliment was appreciated.

Then there’s simply agreeing with the compliment: “Why, yes, I am totally awesome!” Even if you really believe you’re awesome…to me, it seems just a tad rude. Even though you are merely agreeing with the complimenter…no. Perhaps for others. Not for me.

The only thing I’ve been able to think of to say, that’s suitable for all sorts of compliments, is “thank you.”

Or you can just try Harry-the-Puppet’s method of dealing with criticism….

A 1920 socialist proclamation: “But Women’s Day did achieve something. It turned out above all to be an excellent method of agitation among the less political of our proletarian sisters. They could not help but turn their attention to the meetings, demonstrations, posters, pamphlets and newspapers that were devoted to Women’s Day. Even the politically backward working woman thought to herself: “This is our day, the festival for working women,” and she hurried to the meetings and demonstrations.”